Topic: Audience

For many years, American audiences and animators both have regarded animation as a medium for children's stories. Therefore, when animated features are chosen for production, the stories that are selected are stories for children, and when mature pieces are produced, there is an outcry from parents because the supposed draw is for children and these adult pieces might be too much for them.

In the US there is not the same understanding of the animated medium as there is in Japan, where anime is produced for all age groups and tastes. Anime is not the Japanese equivalent of our animation; it is the equivalent of our Hollywood.

But even in America, it was not always so. The earliest experiments with animation were simply that - shorts produced to see what could be done. After that, the early short-subjects were produced to accompany films, films often aimed at an adult audience. These short-subjects were generally humorous and often violent and bawdy. Early short-subject pieces were also produced that were not humorous but were so-called 'mood pieces,' like Disney's Skeleton Dance and Flowers and Trees, which were musical interpretations generally aimed at a wide audience.

So what happened?

One, with the rise of the popularity of short-subject cartoons, especially the popularity of Mickey Mouse, animators felt public pressure to tame their subjects from moralists who saw cartoons as primarily a kid draw and felt that certain forms of humor were unacceptable.

Two, the mood pieces didn't survive the transition into feature-length animation (Disney's Fantasia was a box-office flop) or television. Humorous pieces did, especially into the television market. The funny animal show was a staple of TV cartoons for years.

Three, Disney was such a force in the so-called Golden Age of Animation, that his choices affected the choices of others in the medium. Since he chose to produce a story that was, by this time, a traditional for children as the first full-length animated film with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, others made similar choices. This was further enforced by critics who claimed adults wouldn't want to see full-length cartoons. Those studios that chose not to imitate Disney and went in a separate direction, mostly Warner Brothers, did so by choosing to make highly exaggerated slapstick comedy instead of the Disney style realism, or to do minimalist style limited animation like UPA. But both were making choices to primarily do cartoons for a youth market, especially when their more innovative works didn't bring in the money that the others did. Disney phased-out short-subject cartoons earlier than any other studio, so the influence of them came primarily from Warner Brothers' and UPA's cartoons.

Four, perhaps the largest death-knell, was the Production Code that was adopted in the 1930's which set a uniform standard of morality that could be depicted in films, including cartoons. The effect of the restrictions on artistic freedom cannot be overstated, even if they are not fully known. When the Production Code was abandoned the current rating system was developed, and the old cartoons that were made under the Production Code were granted a G rating. But the G rating has become something that is associated with children's films, and a film that is seen as 'childish' will not draw the teenage audience that is the primary market for films these days, hence the rise is profanity and potty humor - generally done to avoid that G rating. At the same time, any film that is not rated or has a rating of NC-17 (adults only) will not get advertised and therefore will not make money. Because of the preoccupation with sex that the psyche of America has (probably because of our puritan heritage), the rating system places great emphasis on the depiction of sex, so lower film ratings mean less sex but not necessarily less violence.

The medium of animation, for one reason or another, never got associated purely with children's stories in Japan. Possibly one reason is the close relationship that anime has always had with manga. Unlike American comic books, manga never got associated solely with children's stories and were never placed under the heavy regulations that US comics were. Hence manga are produced for readers in ages ranging from very young to the very adult, and anime has been produced that way as well. Certainly there were, and are, regulations. Article 175 of the Japanese Penal Code forbids the publishing of "morally damaging" material. However, the interpretation of 'morally damaging' is apparently debated, changing and relaxing (the Cool Devices series - with its full penetrative sex, exposed genitalia and pubic hair, not to mention the perversions of the sex acts - proves that). Any way one looks at it, it is not the same definition as in the US. Otherwise we wouldn't have notes of warning in reviews about the miniscule bathing nudity in Tonari no Totoro or the casual humorous nudity in Ranma ½.

Of course, if we didn't view animation and comics of all sorts as a medium for children, we wouldn't need sites like A Parent's Guide to Anime. Our view of comics is changing (witness the rise in popularity of very adult comics like Sandman or The Darkness - of course, this is probably because, to paraphrase a comic seller, it's the same people buying comics now who were buying them in the 80's, and market follows consumer), but not animation. After all, parents know that Hollywood movies are not all aimed at children. But the rise of the popularity and the greater exposure that anime is getting now is running smack into our perceptions of the animation medium itself.